Remember the old woman who lived in a shoe? I don't judge her nearly as harshly as I used to, now that I have a husband and six children. In our 100-year-old farmhouse, we have broth, bread, and lots of Smucker personalities, and this blog is about our lives.

Friday, June 20, 2014

On Plugged Vacuum Cleaners and Fierce Moms Properly Humbled

This is a story about How My Life Goes.

These things do not happen to other people.

Bob Welch the famous local author once saw me swatting flies and wrote in his newspaper column that I was
this gentle person and that was probably the most violent thing I’d ever done.

Let’s just say he’s never seen the drill sergeant side of
me, like the time during our recent visit to Minnesota when I was saying
goodbye to Matt and he didn’t want to get out of his chair to hug me and I
snapped, “Get! Up!” and he said, “The last woman I heard give orders like
that was a two-star general, about to be promoted to three star.”

Bob had also never seen the Avenging Angel side of me.It doesn’t come out that often, but when it
does, oh, People, stay out of my way.

Here are two things that let loose the Avenging Angel:

1. 1.
Empty pitchers put back in the refrigerator.

2.2. Clogged vacuum cleaner pipes due to people
vacuuming up stuff that was never intended to get sucked up a vacuum.

Today Jenny was helping me with some cleaning.She tried using one vacuum cleaner, but soon
put it away, declaring that it left a little pile of dirt instead of picking it
up, and used the one from upstairs instead.

Oh my.A sure sign of
a clogged pipe.I felt the AA wings
unfurling.

Then I knelt down and took apart the vacuum cleaner, click by click, and oh
my goodness, you never saw such a nest.I pulled and plucked, and then Jenny helped out by blowing into the other end, dislodging some more, and I had some words to say.

Such words as would make you flinch for the rest of your
life at even thinking of rolling over that twist-tie or button and trying to
vacuum it up.

I thought I’d gotten the point across to all the offspring
who were at home.

So then I sat down and wrote a poem about it.

Listen my children and you shall hear

Your mother shifting into gear.

This morning a daughter tried to vac

But the cleaner would only spit and hack

Like a dying sheep whose end is near.

With grim resolve I approached the task.

I should have worn a breathing mask.

I popped off the pipe and out came wads

Of dust and various ends and odds.

What else might be there? I did not ask.

Carefully then I dug further in.

Out came an ancient bobby pin.

A strip of card stock six inches long

A bottle cap still round and strong.

All stuffed up into that tube of tin.

“Who did this again??” I asked with wrath.

Haven’t I shown you a better path?

Haven’t I lectured and lessoned a lot

What goes in a Hoover and what does not?

Yet still you’re unable to do the math??

They looked at me with guilty eyes.

I felt a need to apologize--

Not to my children in frightened pause--

But to all of my future children-in-laws

Stuck with these vacuumers so unwise.

Then I felt better.

However.I still had
some children who might have been the guilty ones and weren’t here for my
lecture.

After a while Emily came home, along with Esther Mae and
Abigail, two friends who had spent the week with her teaching vacation Bible
school at Winston, two hours away.

We all hung around the kitchen making supper and doing
dishes and getting ready for the purse party we were hosting later in the
evening.Both visitors are a lot of fun—Esther
Mae is energetic and witty, and Abigail is quiet and creative.They both fit right in, and Emily said, “Esther
Mae said she just feels at home here, because our house isn’t all spotlessly clean.And stuff.”

Esther Mae suddenly realized how this sounded.

I told her it was ok.That is the sort of compliment I tend to get.

After a while Steven came home.I had a strong suspicion he was the culprit
in the plugged vacuum cleaner, but I thought I’d give my rant to him and Emily
at the same time, so it would look a little more fair.

So I started in, marching from, “I am SURE I’ve explained
this to you before!” to “Vacuum cleaners are not DESIGNED for stuff like bobby
pins that are going to stick in the pipe” to “SERIOUSLY we should not have to be going over this again!”

I watched them keenly for signs of guilt, ready to pounce on
the culprit with Lecture 2(b) 32 about a fine if this happens again.

Esther Mae and Abigail listened with interest.I did not tone down my tone for their sakes
because, as I said, they just fit right in with the family.

Suddenly Esther Mae said, “It might have been me.”

What???

“Really.It could
have been me.”

I looked at her, dumbfounded.She has never vacuumed in this house in her
life.

She said, “You were gone.Emily let me use your vacuum cleaner.”

Oh. My.

I listened in disbelief and the Avenging Angel’s wings drooped humbly as Emily
explained, “You were gone to the International Student Convention, and I stopped in at their house, and here Esther Mae was upstairs
cleaning her carpet with a broom, and I was like, ‘A broom??’ and she said they
don’t have a vacuum cleaner, so I let her use ours, and she filled the hopper
three times.”

Esther Mae added, “And the stuff you found?Like, a bobby pin and paper and a bottle
cap?That could all very well have been
on our carpet.”

Oh, how my tone changed then, from harsh to kind, from
judgmental to full of grace, from fierce to smiling, from prideful wrath to
meek humility.

"Oh, really, it's okay, really, I shouldn't have been so upset."

Strange how my children enjoyed watching this transition in
their mother as she ate her words, bite by bite, bitter as dandelions, chewy as beef gristle.

My children were more gracious than I deserved, and so was Esther Mae.

And that, as I said, is how my life goes.

Quote of the Day:

Emily: You know how sometimes you step on an ant but you don't squish it? It keeps right on going. Well, I wonder if it's possible that if there were a giant that much bigger than us, they could step on us and we wouldn't get squished.

About Me

Follower of Jesus. Wife of Paul(Mennonite minister, school principal, and grass-seed-warehouse operator). Mom of six. Columnist for Eugene Register-Guard. Author of Ordinary Days, Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting; Downstairs the Queen is Knitting, Tea and Trouble Brewing, and Footprints on the Ceiling.